The War and Democracy Part 4

Chapter xiv., on "The Area of Government," contains useful paragraphs on the distinction between Nation, State, and Nationality; see esp. pp.

222-225.

SIR JOHN SEELEY. _The Expansion of England_. First published in 1883. 4s.

net.

SIR JOHN SEELEY. _Introduction to Political Science_. 1896. 4s. net.

Both these books, the first in particular, are important in this connection. There is no one chapter or section devoted exclusively to the consideration of nationality, but there are constant references to the subject. The point of view is, moreover, instructive. Seeley is, perhaps, the nearest English approach to Treitschke.

J.M. ROBERTSON. _Introduction to English Politics_. 1900. 10s. 6d. net.

Critical from the Rationalistic as Acton is from the Catholic point of view. See esp. Part V., "The Fortunes of the Lesser European States," which after a preliminary essay on Nationality, which the author declares to be "essentially a metaphysical dream," while "the motive spirit in it partakes much of the nature of superst.i.tion," goes on to give a valuable account of the development of the "small nations," Holland, Switzerland, Portugal, etc., by way of showing their value to civilisation as a whole.

P. MILYOUKOV. _Russia and its Crisis_. 1905. 13s. 6d.

Chap. ii. contains some interesting matter on Nationalism, especially of course as it has been developed in Russia.

J.S. MILL. _On Representative Government_. 2s.

Chap, xvi., "Of Nationality as connected with Representative Government."

II. GENERAL HISTORICAL WORKS, ETC.

ALISON PHILLIPS. _Modern Europe. 1815-1899_. 1903. 6s. net.

An excellent general history of Europe, 1815-1899.

SEIGn.o.bOS. _A Political History of Contemporary Europe since 1814_. 2 vols.

1901. 5s. net each.

One of the best general histories of this scope available. It is a translation from the French, with good bibliographies.

_Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century_. Cambridge. 1902. 4s.

6d. net.

A series of studies, by recognised authorities, of various aspects of modern European history. Chap. ii., on "The International History of Europe during the Nineteenth Century," by the late Professor Westlake, is suggestive on the topic of nationality; chaps. v. and vi., on Germany, by a German professor, are interesting as giving the German view of unification by Bismarck; and chaps. ix. and x., on "The Struggle for Italian Unity,"

and "Mazzini," by Mr. Bolton King, are especially valuable.

H.A.L. FISHER. _The Republican Tradition in Europe_. 1911. 6s. net.

Traces the development of the republican, as distinct from the nationalist tradition, in modern Europe, and therefore forms a useful complement to other writers. Chap. ix., on "Italy," and chap. x., on "The German Revolution," are excellent accounts of "1848" in those two countries.

H.A.L. FISHER. _The Value of Small States_. Oxford Pamphlets. 2d.

E. LEVETT. _Europe since Napoleon_. 1913. Blackie. 3s. 6d.

A useful little text-book.

_The Cambridge Modern History_. Vols. ix., x., xi., xii. 16s. net per vol.

Indispensable for knowledge of the facts of the period.

R. NISBET BAIN. _Slavonic Europe, 1447-1796_. 1908. 5s. 6d. net.

Chap. xviii. gives a good account of the part.i.tions of Poland.

BOLTON KING. _A History of Italian Unity_. 2 vols. 1899. 24s. net.

BOLTON KING. _Mazzini_. 1903. Dent, Temple Biographies. 4s. 6d. net.

BISMARCK. _Reflections and Reminiscences_. 2 vols. 1898. Smith Elder.

Out of print. To be bought second-hand.

BuLOW. _Imperial Germany_. 1914. Ca.s.sell. 2s. net.

The last two are indispensable for a true understanding of the principles which underlie the German Empire.

T.J. LAWRENCE. _Principles of International Law_. 1910. 12s. 6d. net.

A useful text-book. See also _Cambridge Mod. Hist_. vol. xii. chap. xxii.

CHAPTER III

GERMANY

"The Germans are vigorously submissive. They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into admiration."--MADAME DE STAeL (1810).

"Greatness and weakness are both inseparable from the race whose powerful and turbid thought rolls on--the largest stream of music and poetry at which Europe comes to drink."--ROMAIN ROLLAND (_Jean Christophe_).

--1. _The German State_.--The German Nation is one of the oldest in Europe: the German State is almost the youngest--of the great States quite the youngest.

Englishmen sometimes wonder why there are so many Royal princes in Germany--why it is that when a vacant throne has to be filled, or a husband to be found for a princess of royal standing, Germany seems to provide such an inexhaustible choice. The reason is that Germany consisted, until recently, not of one State but of a mult.i.tude of States, each of which had a court and a dynasty and sovereign prerogatives of its own. In 1789, at the outbreak of the French Revolution, there were 360 of these States of every sort and size and variety. Some were Kingdoms, like Prussia, some were Electorates, like Hanover (under our English George III.), some were Grand Duchies, some were Bishoprics, some were Free Cities, and some were simply feudal estates in which, owing to the absence of a central authority, n.o.ble families had risen to the rank of independent powers.

These families were the descendants of those "robber-barons" whose castles on the Rhine and all over South and West Germany the tourist finds so picturesque. Prince William of Wied, the first Prince of Albania, is a member of one of them, and is thus ent.i.tled to rank with the royalties of Europe: the father-in-law of ex-King Manoel of Portugal, the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a branch of the Kaiser's own family, is another familiar recent instance. And every one remembers Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the husband of Queen Victoria.

In 1789 the possibility of a German National State was so remote that Germans had not even begun to dream of one. Each little Princ.i.p.ality was jealously tenacious of its local rights, or, as we should say, of its vested interests, as against the common interests of Germany. Most of them were narrow and parochial in their outlook; and the others, the more broad-minded, were not national but cosmopolitan in spirit. To the tradition of munic.i.p.al thinking, which had lasted on uninterruptedly in the Free Cities of Germany from the Middle Ages, Germany owes the excellence of her munic.i.p.al government to-day. To the broad and tolerant humanism of her more enlightened courts, such as Weimar and Brunswick, we owe the influences that shaped the work of Goethe and of Lessing, two of the greatest figures in European thought and letters.

Into these peaceful haunts of culture and parochialism Napoleon, with the armies and the ideas of Revolutionary France, swept like a whirlwind, breaking up the old settled comfortable life of the cities and countryside.

One of the greatest of German writers, the Jew Heine, has described in a wonderful pa.s.sage what the coming of Napoleon meant to the inhabitants of a little German Princ.i.p.ality. It is worth transcribing at some length, for it gives the whole colour and atmosphere of the old local life in Western Germany, which has not even yet entirely pa.s.sed away. The speaker is an old soldier giving reminiscences of his boyhood:

"Our Elector was a fine gentleman, a great lover of the arts, and himself very clever with his fingers. He founded the picture gallery at Dusseldorf, and in the Observatory in that city they still show a very artistic set of wooden boxes, one inside the other, made by himself in his leisure hours, of which he had twenty-four every day.

"In those days the Princes were not overworked mortals as they are to-day.

Their crowns sat very firmly on their heads, and at night they just drew their nightcaps over them, and slept in peace, while peacefully at their feet slept their peoples; and when these woke up in the morning they said, 'Good morning, Father,' and the Princes replied, 'Good morning, dear children.'